Getting Started With SharePoint Online course

If you are struggling to put the pieces together when it comes to SharePoint and OneDrive for Business then I have created this course especially for you. Hi, I’m Robert, a technology trainer and SharePoint veteran who is also a Microsoft MVP that has been helping people for years when it comes to understanding and working better with SharePoint.

I understand that SharePoint seems really daunting and you’re not sure where to begin. Well, I’ve made that easy for you with my course. The lessons here take a complex topic like SharePoint and break them down into small pieces. They focus on a single topic that takes only a few minutes to complete and include a video tutorial showing you exactly what to do as well as providing you downloadable notes you can keep and review at anytime. There are also links to additional information if you want to extend your knowledge further.

My aim is to make you as productive as quickly as possible with SharePoint and that’s why the first lessons show you how to get your documents into SharePoint Online. From there you learn how to use common tools like calendars, tasks lists, and more. I’ll then show you how to recover deleted information as well as use the powerful built-in search functionality that comes with SharePoint Online to find anything! There are over twenty lessons you can work through at your own pace. You are free to return at any point to review all the content at your leisure. You are also free to jump to any lesson that takes your fancy, allowing you to learn at your own pace and in your own way.

The course contains over three hours of video tutorials, 200+ pages of documentation and 30 additional web locations to extend your knowledge. I’m confident that by the end of the course you’ll be using SharePoint like a pro. I’ve worked really hard in creating this course to pass on my knowledge and experience of SharePoint to people like you who need it to do their job. People like you who need to learn SharePoint but don’t know where to start. This course has been built for you and the many others who struggle coming to grips with SharePoint. Read their testimonials below to see how this course has helped them.

Testimonials

“Great introduction to the vast array of capabilities offered by SharePoint via Office 365. Really demystified SharePoint for me in a very easy to follow and practical manner. Thanks heaps Rob!” – Darren Chapman (Pivotal Data Solutions).

“Robert, you’ve done a great job of providing bites size chunks of relevant information to get me on the road to using SharePoint” – Nathan Oldfield (Cybercomp)

“As a user with no/very limited SharePoint experience, I found this course extremely helpful. As course notes have been included it makes referring back to something very easy. I would recommend this course” – Ursula Kriel (Multotec)

“The material is easy to understand and follows a logical sequence that makes learning fun! I would recommend these courses to anyone and they should come out with a better understanding in using all of the tools available to the share point user. Thanks for such a well designed course!” – Charles Perry

“The best training I have been to in recent memory – very practical, customer-focused exercises and loads of great information and resources.” – Tristram Morgan (365 Architects)

“Robert Crane from CIAOPS has created an incredible resource for anyone wanting to get into Sharepoint for Office 365. They are well presented and laid out for users on any level from beginner to advanced. If you follow through the steps and examples you are guaranteed to learn something new even if you think you know it all. Roberts learning academy online should be a go to place for anyone who wants to get serious about their IT.” – Craig Young (Greendata Pty Ltd)

Upcoming events

I’ll shortly be once again out and about doing presentations on Azure and Office 365 for Ingram Micro. This time we’re going to places that we haven’t been before. I look forward to meeting a sea of new faces at these upcoming events. Here are the details of the upcoming roadshow:

Join us for our Cloud Elevate Bootcamp with Robert Crane, Microsoft MVP for a full day of learning around Office 365 and Azure. You’ll come away with not only technical answers but business solutions you can implement and sell to customers.

We have divided the day into two major sessions to maximise your learning:

Why Office 365 and Azure?
This session will take a technical deep dive into both Office 365 and Azure. You’ll learn about the services that constitute both products, you’ll learn how they are licenses and deployed as well as how to migrate from existing on premises environments include Small Business Server (SBS).

The session will be interactive with whiteboard tutorials and answers to your specific questions. By the end of this session you’ll have a much greater understanding about what Office 365 and Azure are and how they can be implemented within businesses.

How to sell Office 365 and Azure?
Azure and Office 365 represent a seismic shift in the way that IT providers need to think about delivering services to customers, but where do you start? This session will give you the knowledge and the tools that will allow you to take advantage of the opportunities that both Office 365 and Azure provide.

This session again is designed to be interactive with lots of practical business examples, whiteboard discussions and examination of real world SMB scenarios.

No matter what stage of your cloud journey you are current at, as an IT professional you’ll get value from attending both of these sessions.

You’ll get the chance to hear the latest product news, have your specific questions answered and learn about the opportunities that are now available to you in the Microsoft Cloud.

A day not to be missed.

Dates and locations

Melbourne – 22nd February
9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration starts 8:30am
All Seasons Bendigo
171-183 McIvor Road
Bendigo VIC 3550

Adelaide – 28th February
9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration starts 8:30am
Mercure Adelaide
125 North Terrace,
Adelaide SA 5000

Sydney – 2nd March
9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration starts 8:30am
Novotel Homebush
Olympic Blvd & Herb Elliott Ave
Sydney Olympic Park NSW 2127

Gold Coast – 7th March
9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration starts 8:30am
Novotel Surfers Paradise
3105 Surfers Paradise Blvd
Surfers Paradise QLD 4217

Hobart – 9th March
9:00am to 5:00pm
Registration starts 8:30am
Grand Chancellor Hotel
1 Davey Street
Hobart TAS 7000

Register here

I hope to see you there.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 131

Some news and opinions to start the show from Marc and I. We discuss some of the new learning offerings from Microsoft and why they are so important for IT Professionals to use to upskill the knowledge. We then dive into another discussion with a Microsoft Ignite Australia presenter, Elaine van Bergen whose topics are:

How to build a modern portal with Office 365 and on premises data

See how you can build a modern portal on Azure PaaS by leveraging the API’s and out of the box elements available from Office 365. We’ll showcase a modern portal on Office 365 including use of the Graph API, Office 365 Groups, OneDrive and the Video Portal all combined into a compelling and responsive design with full level of control over customisation. Also we’ll discuss options for utilising the SharePoint framework for smaller customisations and how elements of the solution can be integrated with on-premises data via Azure Hybrid Connections.

Deploying and governing Office 365 Groups

Office 365 Groups is one of the best ways to get wide adoption and usage of Office 365. It’s a fundamental building block of many of the newer features of Office 365 including Planner. Explore how to get Office 365 Groups deployed and setup and how to do this with the most common Hybrid setups of Exchange. In addition, we will also go through the various governance and control options to help keep groups well controlled in a large organisation. Finally, we will briefly cover the API’s that can be used to pull Office 365 Groups into custom solutions.

Don’t forget to send us your feedback at feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-131-elaine-van-bergen/

or on Soundcloud here:

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

Microsoft teams gains steam

Flow updates

Why developers (And IT pros) need Azure skills

Microsoft OpenEdX

CIAOPS Need to know Webinar–February 2017

Our next webinar of 2017 is now ready for registrations. As always, the event is free to attend and provides you with the latest news around Office 365 and the Microsoft Cloud as well as deep dive into a particular topic. This month we are going to have a close look at the relationship between Office 365 and Azure to give you a better idea of how the products work together and how you can take advantage of both in your business.

You can register now at:

February Webinar Registration

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – February 2017
Thursday 16th of February 2017
11am – 12am Sydney Time

All sessions are recorded and posted to the CIAOPS Academy.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The CIAOPS Need to Know Webinars are free to attend but if you want to receive the recording of the session you need to sign up as a CIAOPS patron (for only USD$10 per month) which you can do here:

https://www.patreon.com/ciaops

or purchase them individually at:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/

Also feel free at any stage to email me directly via director@ciaops.com with your webinar topic suggestions.

I’d also appreciate you sharing information about this webinar with anyone you feel may benefit from the session.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 130

Marc and I have some brief news and cloud updates for you and then we are straight into our guest for this episode. I speak with MVP Alan Burchill all about his upcoming Microsoft Ignite presentations:

Using Edge in the Enterprise

Microsoft Edge is one of the most secure and web standards compatible browsers on the market. See how the new management features in Windows 10 can help IT Professional to provide support for legacy web sites while still allowing users to access web sites with the latest web standards.

Don’t forget to send us your feedback at feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-130-alan-burchill/

or on Soundcloud here:

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

Office 365 German datacenters

Microsoft tech days online

Microsoft tech summit – Birmingham

Learning online advertising–Part 1

There are a lot of things in this world I have no real clue about. One of these is online advertising to grow your business via the likes of Google and Facebook ads. My plan therefore is to endeavour to make sense of these and share with you my journey. So, let the story begin.

There are lot of “so called” online advertising experts out there spruiking their wares. Others I have talked to failed to provide any really concrete or repeatable evidence of the successful way that they have used online advertising to boost their businesses. This to my mind is not a very satisfactory set of circumstances. This has therefore lead me to the reality that I need to dive deep and understand this for myself, in terms that make sense to me.

I think step one in this process is to actually define a tangible and profitable goal you are looking to achieve. Something that you can measure direct clicks from online advertising to profit, which seems to me few actually do definitively. You want to know that X amount of clicks will generate you, on average, Y amount of dollars. Otherwise you are simply wasting money in my books.

So, for the purposes of my adventures here and to make measurement easier, I am going to stick to one simple desired outcome which is:

I want to boost the number of paid subscriptions to my online Getting Started with SharePoint Online Course.

That now gives me an endpoint to take people after they have clicked any online ad. See my ad. Like my ad. Click my ad. Pay for my product. Profit generated. Simple right?

Now the second thing I did was put a hard stop on the amount of money I was going to spend before making adjustments. The amount that I settled on was $100. Thus, each time a $100 threshold was crossed I would stop and review before continuing.

The above shows you my first attempt using just Facebook ads. For my $100 I received about 86,000 views and about 1,100 clicks. That is a conversion rate of about 1%, which is no unexpected from what I have determined. Now the big question, how many of these 1,100 or so clicks actually converted into dollars? Answer? Zero. Yup, zero. None of the 1,100 or so people who click actually signed up and pad for the course.

Disappointing based on pure numbers but let’s have a think about this. The Facebook online ads do appear to have been doing their work by bringing people to the online course. The problem appears to be actually converting them to buying customers. In that respect one would have to conclude that issues lie with the destination not the online ad. Something about the destination site is not resonating with people. In short, the destination is not making the value statement well enough.

Of course there could be other factors such as the online ads attracting the wrong demographic and so on. However, I need to pick something to focus on and adjust so, to me, the most obvious is that the destination is failing to convert.

Thus, the next step in this learning process is to revamp the destination and make it more appealing and more focused on conversion. I’ve got some ideas on some improvements that can be made and once these are done I’ll click off the next $100 spend with Facebook online ads and see what results that produces. I’ll also spend more time doing research about this whole online advertising process and report back my findings.

However, in summary I would suggest:

1. Start with a well defined goal you want your online advertising to achieve. Something that is measurable.

2. Aim to have a clear path from your online advertising to profit. Be very clear about how a click on an online ad is going to generate you profit.

3. Place a spending limit on your advertising at which point to can stop and review the success of your campaign.

4. Understand where issues lie. Getting people to click or converting them after they have clicked. The process is not just a single component, there are many moving parts here.

Finally, remember that no matter what anyone says, simply throwing up online advertising is no automatic guarantee of success. Although many claim to be doing it successfully most aren’t (from what I see) so always base decisions on hard evidence and past performance not the emotional promises of what the future ‘may” bring with some “special” method. Science is the foundation of any art. You need to get the basics right before you gain insight.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 129

Marc and I give our usual Office 365 and Azure update. We then speak with John Liu about his upcoming presentation at Microsoft Ignite Australia:

Serverless in Office 365 – Build Services with Azure Functions

There was a time when it was the good old days – we ran SharePoint on-premises, and business always wanted more customizations, and so we built them and delivered great value. Now, it seems as everything is moving towards Office 365, and there are fewer and fewer customizations we can do. To the business, it seems more and more we have to say no – we can’t do that. Code has to run somewhere. Suddenly, we are in the realm of hosting our own webjob, we may even have to find or buy a VM. We are left to wonder if we need to learn Docker too. Thank goodness – in 2016 we saw the rise of a new buzzword #Serverless – it promises a solution to many of these problems and lets us focus on what we do best again – creating solutions. Without having to worry so much about where or how to run it. This session is about introducing Azure Functions, and various amazing scenarios we can apply it to SharePoint and Office 365. Whether you are a new, veteran or even front-end developer, or if you are an IT Pro well versed in Powershell. This session is for you.

Don’t forget to send us your feedback at feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-129-john-liu/

or on Souncloud here:

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

Microsoft Cloud run rate

OneDrive and Officelens updates

Dynamics 365 roadmap

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 128

Marc and I are joined by a returning guest to talk all about her upcoming Microsoft Ignite Australia presentations. Sonia Cuff gives us the low down on what to expect with the following two sessions she is presenting:

Making SaaS part of your IT Strategy

With the business pushing for SaaS apps, why are we saying no? Can you balance an in-house infrastructure under strict controls & policies with a business reliance on an outsourced, uncontrolled solution? We’ll look at how to enable the business while still protecting them and how to keep your sanity.

and

The CEO reviewed your project & you won;t believe what happened next

Your budget was agreed. A reasonable timeframe was achieved. The implementation went smoothly. So why is the business still unhappy? You’ll learn why Digital Transformation is more than just technology deployment. We’ll show you what successful Digital Transformation looks like to the CEO & how you can ensure your IT work really is enabling people to achieve more. Find out some of the practical tools that Microsoft provides that can help you navigate this conversation with your executive stakeholders.

There is also the latest Office 365 and Azure news and don’t forget to send us your feedback at feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-128-sonia-cuff/

or on Soundcloud here: